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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that Turkey “gave away” Greek islands that “used to be ours” and are “within shouting distance”. “There are still our mosques, our shrines there,” he said, referring to the Ottoman occupation of the islands. (Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

Turkish propagandists also have been twisting facts to try to portray Greece as the aggressor.

Although Turkey knows that the islands are legally and historically Greek, Turkish authorities want to occupy and Turkify them, presumably to further the campaign of annihilating the Greeks, as they did in Anatolia from 1914 to 1923 and after.

Any attack against Greece should be treated as an attack against the West.

There is one issue on which Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), are in complete agreement: The conviction that the Greek islands are occupied Turkish territory and must be reconquered. So strong is this determination that the leaders of both parties have openlythreatened to invadethe Aegean.Continue reading →

In the meantime, the turmoil offers an opportunity for Russia to advance its interests. Of course, the EU is an absolutely critical trading partner for Russia, so if the bloc starts to fray at the seams, that presents financial risks to an already struggling Russian economy. Russia’s central bank governor Elvira Nabiulllina warned in June of the brewing threat that a Greek default would have on Russia. “We do consider that scenario as one of possible risks which would increase turbulence in the financial markets in the European market, bearing in mind the fact the European Union is one of major trading partners, and we are definitely worried by it,” she said in an interview with CNBC.

With the economic fallout in mind, Russia does see strategic opportunities in growing discord within Europe. First, Russia is pushing its Turkish Stream Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline that it has proposed that would run from Russia through Turkey and link up in Greece. From there, Russian gas would travel on to the rest of Europe. Russia is vying against a separate pipeline project that would send natural gas from the Caspian Sea through Turkey and on to Europe. Continue reading →

Situations like this, where Greece has turned full Communist, presents a major security risk for all of Europe. Instead of risking a third world war, the German-dominated EU and Russia will likely find compromise. This compromise would entail Europe kicking America out and joining forces with Russia, who will have successfully driven a wedge between the two — which is now underway. Or perhaps a war which NATO cannot defend Europe from could be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Only time will tell. Either way, the German-led EU will split from America.

In an interview for Russia’s RIA Novosti, Greek defense analyst Ilias Iliopoulos noted that in the interests of closer military-technical cooperation with Russia, Greece could allow the country to use of its military bases, and that this possibility may well be discussed during the Greek Defense Minister’s visit to Moscow later this week.

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The analyst recalls that the event, which “has great political and symbolic significance,” comes on the heels of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ “historic” visit to Moscow last week.

“The Tsipras visit held a great political importance. As for defense matters and Kammenos’s visit, I believe that Greece must do everything it can to move closer to Russia on issues of defense, defense policy, technology, cooperation and defense diplomacy. Greece, as you know, is the only NATO country to which several advanced Russian defense systems were exported several years ago. The country’s air defense is very largely based on Russian systems.” Continue reading →